


These Terrible Questions

by LiterallyLen



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Politics Galore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 20:29:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17230694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiterallyLen/pseuds/LiterallyLen
Summary: Alec links their fingers together like he’s grappling for a lifeline and Magnus is his only salvation, watching as the twinkling snowflakes swirl around them and cascade onto his strong shoulders.“You should have  someone who could love you in all the ways you deserve,” Magnus says.I thought that was you,” Alec contends.“I wish it was” He croaks, And Alec realized that he simply could not kiss away the pain like he had so many times before, but he tries anyhow, because this is Magnus, and he wouldn’t be Alec— his Alexander— if he didn’t give him all he had.Alec kisses Magnus and it tastes like the crisp winter air, and goodbyes that come too soon..-Alec Lightwood is everything passionate, and proud, and just a little broken, and Magnus Bane is  everything brilliant, and glimmering, and constantly wearing a facade. They’re two sides of the same, roughened around the edges coin, each with the fate of so many more on their shoulders, and not knowing how to hold onto one another while embroiled in the manufactured conspiracy of Valentine’s death, and the aftermath of a revolution that promised liberation and justice for so many souls.





	These Terrible Questions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nathalys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nathalys/gifts).



> Hello you gorgeous souls!
> 
> So first and foremost, this entire work is dedicated to to the beyond lovely Nathalys, who I could wax poetic about for days for dealing with my messy ass for so long! LMAO babe I hope you enjoy this and thank you so so much for donating to the incredible efforts by the Fandom Trumps Hate peeps<3 You're stunning.
> 
> Second, this was such a fun piece to write! Especially for a Poli/Sci major who adores these dweebs to the moon and back! SO I hope ya'll will enjoy reading it half as much!
> 
> And real quick, yes I did get the title from the spectacular musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812... I am so entirely and irrecoverably in love with Phillipa Son it's not even funny.... But that's not the point lol
> 
> Please enjoy this short cut and await the first technical chapter which'll come next Thursday, and then expect weekly installments from there on out<3

~August: Second Year of Alec Lightwood’s first Term 

 

It’s a dreary day—the kind of dreary that only the east coast can conjure up so seamlessly. The Atlantic is an ugly, washed out gray that churns almost viciously against the coast, looking more like skeleton fingers scraping for shore when it retreats back over anything else, lapping against the eery skyline with a vicious sort of vivacity— blotched out like a child’s messy fingerprints. Ugly and ominous looking. 

It’s the kind of dreary day that bodes for nothing good to come, but he doesn’t even pay it any mind, instead Alec can’t keep his eyes off of him. 

Magnus stands straight, rigid— strong. The suit he’s wearing is a pristine cobalt, and its spread across the expanse of his shoulders in the exact right breath to make it look impeccable and effortless all at once. Forever the beautiful phenomenon. Someone that Alec never had even an ounce of a chance to call his own… Not truly, not for long. Not with any conviction in his voice if he were to do so.

Their gazes meet for a fraction of a second before Magnus flickers away from him so quickly that Alec swears he’s experienced whiplash, watching as the other man saunters into the room as if he hasn’t a care in the world, and deposits himself between two of the wealthiest men on this side of the hemisphere. Ever so primly completing this warped circle of power and affluence.

“Nice for you to join us Magnus,” Raphael, with a pointed swirl to his flute of scarlet blood, greets with a passive sort of flatness to his tone. 

“The life for someone as iconic as mua never knows the definition of being on time my darling boy,” he counters without a fault, giving one of his cheekiest of grins even if he still refuses to even acknowledge Alec’s very presence. 

“Well I suppose everyone is accounted for,” the queen of the Fay, in her ever flighty— almost vapidly buoyant— timbre, gives a quick clap to her hands— impatient and impartial to just about everything that passes her way.

“Yes,” Luke intones, strong eyes never straying from Alec’s frame. “Alec, what’s the point of this? I thought we decided to be more transparent? No longer deciding the fate of this damn planet on our whims?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve changed that pretty, little, Nephilim mind of yours already?” Magnus needles while examining his manicured nails, words cutting— a Seraph blade that drips of hunny, an glints with a wicked sort of intent.

Alec in turn tries not to look effected, not like the distance between them— both physical and metaphorical— was killing a piece of him. 

But no, this is not Alec’s doing— not completely anyhow. There story has been told a million times over— sealed with sheer brimstone and will, it’s over now. Everything that has ever been needed to be said between them has ended and Alec can no longer allow himself to care— allow himself to feel anything. and now Alec has the responsibility of the largest and most influential super power on his shoulders. He can’t let Magnus and all his everything cloud his judgment, not any longer. He’s learned his lesson. And unlike most folks, Alec only needs to be burned once to be taught to stay away from a flame as bright as the nova that is Magnus fucking Bane.

“No High Warlock Bane, I have not reneged on the decision we’d made,” Alec most definitely does not derive any sort of pleasure from how Magnus’s face coils sourly at the formality of his words. (Okay, so maybe only slightly.) “In contrary, I’m more than happy with what we’ve decided… However, as per our agreement our country of Idris remains to have highly skilled soldiers under disguise in designated spots only made privy to me and a few of my most elite counsel members.”

“So your siblings then?”

Alec pretends to not have heard Magnus’s unnervingly accurate deduction. 

“Well while doing so, my intel has collected that there’s knew rumblings in the circle, of Valentine’s death— Strong enough to fester in the streets, the talk of a uproar. Strong enough that my soldiers felt it pertinent to inform me of their country’s going ons after all this time.”

“What sort of rumblings of Valentine’s death?” The queen yawns, it almost infuriates him how blasé she’s acting, as if her Fay folk were not too a protected species under his administration— as if she does not need his soldiers might to protect her and hers. 

“Rumblings of his death being some sort of conspiracy, like he was targeted…”

A silence blankets over the room after Alec’s words rings with a thud.

“All right,” Luke nods, shattering the stilted quiet— ever the most collected in any sort of situation. “We always knew that the second that jet spiraled into the Atlantic that we’d began a conspiracy for the era. We just all need to keep our chins up and not play into these theses of a martyred Valentine.”

“Like perhaps not meeting cloak and dagger in a smoke filled room?” Raphael goads with a cocked brow and huff to his cigar. 

“Yes, exactly like that.”

“No, what we need to do is figure out who’s starting to solicit folks for another uprising in our boarders.”

Magnus’s head perks up, eyes appraising Alec where he stands.

“What? You don’t think one of us started this little controversy, do you?”

“Huh?” Alec balks, only slightly affronted. “No, of course not.”

“Don’t you try to lie to me alexander,” he seethes, perhaps one of only a handful of people who’d ever dare to call him by his christian name over his title of council Lightwood. “I know when you’re thinking madness.”

Each of their respective faces blush scarlet, neither willing to acknowledge the elephant in the room of just how Magnus has come to know each of Alec’s facets so intimately— more entirely than any other. And no one else surrounding them wants to poke that particular crouching tiger either— except for the notable exception of the queen whom always seems to revel in the discomfort of others. 

“Watch your tone High Warlock, this is a meeting amongst equals.”

“Not really equal if Idris is colonizing our lands now is it?” He gripes, teeth clenched and brows scrunched in an expression that still brings residual feelings of want floating up to Alec’s chest, and blood to his groin.

“Common wealths, the properties designated to each of your peoples are common wealths.”

“So you can take the military might of our people, but not grant us aid in our own strifes,” Magnus’s eyes spark with feeling, and his words sharpen. Alec can really hate how petty he can be.

“Those aren’t the terms of our agreement, and I would ask you kindly not to simplify it in such an unflattering light. Now if you’d like to discuss the boundaries between Idris and the home of the Warlocks I would be happy to arrange a meeting without an audience, but That’s not the problem at hand,” Alec tries to reply in the most composed manner he could possibly muster.

“You think one of us helped ignite this resurgence of Valentine’s message. That we began the whispers of the truth behind his death.”

“Whispers spread quickly in the Down World, do they not?”

“Bull shit!” He all but shouts.

“I will remind you for a final time to keep a level tone while speaking to me High Warlock Bane,” Alec sneers out with labored breaths. “And it’s not an accusation towards any of you. I just wanted to pass along this new found information to you all, I thought it pertinent for you all to stay informed of the going ons of this situation in particular. Just as we’d discussed the day at hand. If this council of representatives is ever to be successful then we must keep channels of communication open.”

“The hell you invited us over for just keeping your promise,” Magnus huffs with a substantially hushed tone. “Listen here Lightwood, me, you, everyone in this room! We’re all connected in ways that bind, which means you better get your head out your ass and realize that you need to actually start trusting us or else you’ll see Alicante burn under your watch by some new Valentine upstart! And you should start that by not inviting us over here to accuse us of being big mouths looking for fire to poke.”

With a final, scorching glower directed Alec’s way, Magnus storms out with stomping feet and bits of electricity sparking out his hands. 

Alec’s left to just watch him go— a tableau that’s played out a hundred times prior but never gets any easier.

I’m always going to stay, and you’ll always leave.”

Mechanically, face placid and jaw ever so slightly clenched, Alec tells the remaining members of the council to keep their ears to the ground and that there next meeting is scheduled for the second Thursday of the subsequent month, just as usual. 

He pointedly refuses to chase Magnus, refuses to allow himself to be swallowed back up into hthe deep dark depths of him, while he always keeps him comfortably distanced from the turth of his very core. 

Alec refuses to chase Magnus because he knows it in his bones that running the world’s greatest super power— the mightiest hegemony of all time— is one thing, but being loved and loving Magnus Bane is something else entirely… Something that has always left him windswept and dazed and always aching for more, for all of him, even— No, especially, the pieces Magnus would never bare to give.

 

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you lovely sugarplums of rreading! And seriously, it would make my whole entire week if you let me know what you thought in the comments down below! I promise to squeal right along with you about anything lmfao!  
> All My Love  
> ~Len


End file.
